Tonight, we explore one of the Bible’s
most powerful artifacts.
Anybody who is unworthy could be blinded,
or if they touch it, they’ll be killed.
A holy relic that’s been missing for over 2,000 years.
People continue to believe that the Ark is still out there,
that it still can be found.
Now, we uncover the top theories surrounding its disappearance.
It was simply carried to Ethiopia.
It’s in the Vatican Secret Archives.
He hid it in anticipation of the Babylonian destruction.
Can a new search finally reveal its location?
I’m confident that this is the mother lode.
What became of the legendary Ark of the Covenant,
and can it ever be found?
[music]
Qumran, Israel, 2014.
After 16 years of hard work,
researcher Jim Barfield believes he’s closing in
on one of history’s most mysterious artifacts.
JIM BARFIELD: This ancient Jewish settlement
is where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947.
But I believe it hides
an even greater treasure.
I believe I’ve found the location
of the greatest biblical archaeological discovery,
the Ark of the Covenant.
LAURENCE: If Barfield is correct,
he could solve a mystery that begins
thousands of years ago.
ROBERT CARGILL: According to the Book of Exodus,
the story of the Ark dates back to Ancient Egypt
in the 13th century BCE.
NICOLA DENZEY LEWIS: The Exodus is one
of the most famous stories ever told.
Moses and the Israelites
survive a plague that takes
the first-born sons of the land.
Moses leads the Israelites out of the land of Egypt,
and they move across the Red Sea,
where the waters miraculously part
when he holds up his magical staff.
HUGO MENDEZ: They arrive at a mountain
in which God gives them
the Ten Commandments.
The Israelites build a holy vessel,
a sacred box to hold these tablets of the Commandments.
It’s called the Ark of the Covenant.
NICOLA: The Bible gives a very clear description
as to what the Ark of the Covenant looks like.
God himself is, in fact, the architect of this,
so it’s very precise about the measurements
and the way that it has to be built.
HUGO: It’s made of acacia wood two and a half cubits long,
one and a half cubits wide, and one and a half cubits high,
or about 52 inches long,
31 inches wide, 31 inches high.
It’s covered entirely in gold inside and out.
It has four gold rings
on which poles are attached for it to be carried.
Finally, it’s topped off with an ornate gold lid
that has two sculptures of cherubim on top.
LAURENCE: According to the Old Testament,
the Israelites carry the Ark for 40 years
wandering through the desert.
Along the way, it displays great power.
NICOLA: In the Book of Joshua,
when they reach the River Jordan,
the Ark miraculously dries up the waters
so that they can cross.
ED FEINSTEIN: The first battle that the Israelites fight
is against the great city
of Jericho.
Israelites were commanded to circle the city seven times,
blow the horns, and then in the presence of the Ark,
the walls of Jericho would fall.
The Israelites would take the city
and they would gain possession of that area
of the land of Israel.
Further accounts in First and Second Samuel
note that anybody who is unworthy
who even looks at the Ark could be blinded,
or if they touch it, they’ll be killed.
There’s also the story of the Philistines.
The Philistines capture the Ark.
They’re suddenly afflicted with a plague of mice or rats,
and with horrible boils that the Philistines get
all over their bodies.
They actually end up giving the Ark back
to the Israelites, and along with it,
a coffer filled with gold sculptures--
kind of an apology for having taken the Ark
in the first place.
LAURENCE: Eventually, the Ark is brought to Jerusalem,
where King Solomon builds the first Jewish temple
at a place called the Temple Mount.
He houses the Ark inside within a special room
called the Holy of Holies.
The temple is completed by around 950 BCE,
and for four centuries, the Ark in the temple
becomes the center sort of thrumming heart
of the Kingdom of Israel.
The Ark of the Covenant was the focal point
of religious devotion,
a place where God spoke to the world.
LAURENCE: Then, war breaks out in 587 BC.
CARGILL: The Babylonians attack Jerusalem
and finally destroy the city after a 30-month siege.
And the Babylonians are absolutely brutal.
HUGO: They tear down the temple.
They force Zedekiah to watch every one of his sons murdered
in front of him.
They then blind him so that this image
is the last thing he sees.
They take him to Babylon
and they make him a prisoner there
until his death.
LAURENCE: They also set Jerusalem on fire,
and everything burns,
including, perhaps, the Ark.
CARGILL: This isn’t just a Bible story.
We have archaeological evidence that the Babylonians
destroyed Jerusalem.
Babylon loots the city before it burns.
And we have some records of some of the things
that they took, but something that’s never mentioned
in any of those records is the Ark of the Covenant,
something that would have certainly been mentioned
had they taken it.
ROBERT CORNUKE: So, a large amount of historians
believe that the Ark of the Covenant
was in Jerusalem up to 587 BC.
After that, it’s almost entirely absent from the biblical text.
NICOLA: Is that really it?
Is this immensely powerful object really gone
after centuries of it being this kind of center of worship?
All of a sudden, it just disappears?
Nobody wants this to be the end of the Ark.
LAURENCE: According to some ancient texts, it’s not.
HUGO: There’s a reason why so many people
continue to believe that the Ark is still out there,
that it still can be found.
There’s a reason they’re still looking for it.
It’s because there are stories that the Ark
narrowly escaped the temple’s destruction in Jerusalem.
LAURENCE: These stories come from first and second-century
Jewish sources, including one called the Mishnah.
CARGILL: And the Mishnah is actually a collection
of oral traditions that claim to go all the way back
to the destruction of the temple at the hands of the Babylonians.
NICOLA: In one such story, one Rabbi Yehudah
tells that before the Babylonian destruction of the temple,
an earlier king, Josiah,
worried about the Ark, and he hid it
in anticipation of the Babylonian destruction.
LAURENCE: According to Rabbi Yehudah,
the Ark is hidden with a chest of gold
and a sacred walking stick carried by Moses’ brother Aaron.
CARGILL: King Josiah also hides this chest
that the Philistines sent to the Israelites
along with the Ark of the Covenant
in an effort to say, "We’re sorry we stole
the Ark of the Covenant from you."
ED: Rabbi Yehudah offered the idea
that the priests of Jerusalem
prepared a secret underground chamber
beneath the Temple Mount,
and that’s where they hid the Ark.
LAURENCE: The site of Solomon’s original temple,
the Temple Mount, has long been a powerful
and mysterious location.
HUGO: There are at least 35 acres of ancient rooms
and over 50 tunnels that we know of
under the Temple Mount.
Some of these date all the way back to King Solomon.
CARGILL: Many Orthodox Jews
believe that the Ark of the Covenant
was hidden in one of these chambers,
and that one day it will be rediscovered.
LAURENCE: It’s 1970, and one theory
about the Ark of the Covenant is about to be tested
as Israeli authorities begin excavations
close to Jerusalem’s Western Wall
near the site of Solomon’s original temple.
HUGO: It’s a major archaeological dig.
The Western Wall runs along the west side
of the Temple Mount,
and beneath it are thousands of years of construction,
structures, tunnels, artifacts.
This is a huge project, planned to take
a total of 18 years.
LAURENCE: It’s a project that also creates religious tension,
as the site is now home to the Dome of the Rock,
an Islamic shrine built in 691 AD.
CARGILL: Because the Temple Mount
is under Islamic control,
you also have the political part of this,
which is Israelis digging
into the Islamic part of the city.
And any excavation that cuts under the Temple Mount
by the Israeli government
would just be a political timebomb.
But if you believe, like many Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem,
that the Ark of the Covenant is hidden in the Temple Mount,
then this excavation project is coming tantalizingly close.
LAURENCE: One such believer is Rabbi Yehuda Getz.
CARGILL: Rabbi Getz is not affiliated
with this dig, right?
This is an Israeli government scientific excavation.
But Rabbi Getz wants to find the Ark of the Covenant.
And in the middle of that excavation,
Rabbi Getz realizes that they are close
to where he believes the Ark of the Covenant might be.
So, Rabbi Getz gathers up some workmen
and begins a secret excavation of his own.
Getz chooses a spot called the Warren Gate,
which leads straight under the Temple Mount.
He’s had 11 years to prepare for this moment.
He’s reviewed archaeological reports,
ancient maps, he’s consulted with experts,
and he is convinced that this is the closest possible location
to the Holy of Holies chamber that once held the Ark.
ED: After some weeks of digging,
Muslim worshippers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque
hear all kinds of banging
going on under their floor.
And so, the Muslim guards
go down to see what’s going on,
and they encounter a group of Israeli young people
smuggling dirt out of these tunnels.
A violent confrontation ensues between these amateur excavators
armed only with shovels, hoes, and picks,
and the guards rushing in from all sides.
Israeli police have to come to quell
a full-scale underground riot.
LAURENCE: In 1982 the government orders the tunnel
to be resealed, and it remains cemented shut to this day.
ED: Rabbi Yehuda Getz claimed
that at the end of the tunnel that he dug,
he could see something--
something golden and something glowing.
Is it perhaps the Ark of the Covenant?
We may never know how close
Rabbi Getz got
to the Ark of the Covenant,
but those tunnels are still there.
And maybe if some time the political situation
changes in Israel, we might be able to access them,
and perhaps reveal that the rabbi
was right all along.
LAURENCE: Others believe that whatever Rabbi Getz
spotted in 1981, it wasn’t the Ark,
because that relic was moved centuries earlier.
After the Babylonians
destroyed the first temple,
let’s just assume that the Ark
is safely underneath the Temple Mount,
and as years roll by, other conquering people
come and go, and the Ark is still there.
Eventually the Jews are allowed to return to Jerusalem,
and they build a second temple on the same site.
And then, a new sheriff comes to town.
In 63 BCE, the Roman Empire
conquers the entire Eastern Mediterranean region.
And when the Jews rebel against Rome,
Rome decimates them.
LAURENCE: The Romans destroy the second temple in 70 AD,
and they dismantle it stone by stone,
taking its treasures back to Rome.
Some believe one of those treasures
is the Ark.
CARGILL: There are many artworks and writings from the Romans
describing the many spoils from the Jewish War.
The Ark of the Covenant is not shown among any of them.
ED: But did the Romans know that they captured the Ark,
if they captured the Ark?
Well, they didn’t know what they captured in the temple.
They called the Menorah, the great candelabrum
that the Jews had built for the temple,
they just call it a candlestick.
With or without the Ark, the temple’s spoils
are paraded around the city of Rome
before they are put on display
in the ironically-named Temple of Peace
that faces the Coliseum,
which is at that time being built,
and largely funded by spoils from the Jewish War.
LAURENCE: The Temple of Peace stands in Rome
for nearly 500 years.
After that, if the Ark is there,
we don’t know where it goes.
Rome is invaded by barbarians and falls in the year 476 AD.
CORNUKE: For hundreds of years, it seems that the Ark
has just disappeared,
until the 12th century, when it is mentioned in a book.
It’s supposedly still in Rome,
but it is not at the Temple of Peace.
CARGILL: The book is called
the "Descriptio Lateranensis Ecclesiae."
It’s written by John the Deacon,
and he works at the Lateran Basilica in Rome.
And he claims that this is where the Ark of the Covenant
is being kept.
It’s the oldest church in Rome, founded in the year 324 AD
while the Temple of Peace is still standing,
and it’s only located a half a mile away.
Some theorists believe that after Constantine
legalizes Christianity in the Roman Empire
in the year 312, this church is built right away
to house the Christian relics of Rome.
Around 1160, this is exactly what John the Deacon writes.
He says that the Ark of the Covenant
and many other temple treasures
are stored in the Lateran Church beneath the altar.
LAURENCE: Six-hundred years later,
the Ark is mentioned again in papal records.
In 1745, the pope at the time,
Benedict XIV, has three sacred objects
moved from the Lateran Treasury--
the Staff of Moses, there’s Aaron’s Rod,
and lastly, there’s the Ark of the Covenant.
HUGO: Now, this is the last mention of the Ark in Rome.
But some theorists believe that the Ark
has remained in the possession of the popes ever since,
and they think it’s in the Vatican Secret Archives.
LAURENCE: Hidden beneath St. Peter’s Square,
the archives have an estimated 53 miles of shelves
holding thousands of years’ worth of church documents
and artifacts.
They have the correspondence of Martin Luther.
They have Henry VIII’s request for a marriage annulment.
Who knows what else is in the Vatican Archives?
Could the Ark of the Covenant be down there?
CARGILL: But let’s be very clear.
No pope, no church official has ever claimed
that the Vatican has possession of the Ark of the Covenant.
LAURENCE: Axum, capital of an ancient African kingdom
known as one of the world’s four great powers
in the first century BC.
Today, it’s the holiest city in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
This religion’s 36 million followers
have no doubt where the Ark of the Covenant rests.
They know it’s here.
CARGILL: What the Ethiopians say,
according to their religion, is that these Ark hunters
focused on what happened
following the destruction
of Jerusalem in 587 BC
are all on a wild goose chase.
NICOLA: The Ethiopians believe
that actually the Ark left Jerusalem
about 350 years earlier than
the destruction of the temple.
CARGILL: And it wasn’t lost in a war,
and it wasn’t destroyed.
It was simply picked up and carried off.
And it ends up being carried all the way to Ethiopia,
where it remains to this day.
LAURENCE: According to this tradition,
the Ark leaves Jerusalem during the reign of King Solomon.
In the Bible’s first Book of Kings
and second Chronicles,
there’s a story of King Solomon
who greets in his kingdom a queen.
While she’s known as the Queen of Sheba,
and her origins were actually unknown,
modern-day historians associate her
with the land of Ethiopia.
ED: In the Bible, the Queen of Sheba
comes to Jerusalem to test the wisdom
of the mighty King Solomon.
She brings him gold and all kinds of presents,
and having discovered that he is everything she’s heard,
the Queen of Sheba returns to her kingdom in Africa.
But the Ethiopian texts like to elaborate on this story,
that the Queen of Sheba comes to visit Solomon,
and by the time she returns,
she’s pregnant with Solomon’s baby.
And she gives birth to a son and names him Menelik.
NICOLA: Menelik is raised in Ethiopia,
and when he comes of age, his mother, the Queen of Sheba,
decides it’s time for him to go to Jerusalem
and meet King Solomon, his biological father.
So, they meet for the first time,
and Solomon is really favorably impressed
with this young man.
He asks Menelik to stay and to become his heir.
LAURENCE: Menelik declines, returning to Ethiopia
as his mother’s heir.
When Menelik returns to Ethiopia,
he’s shocked to discover that along with his supplies,
he finds the Ark of the Covenant.
Now, Ethiopian accounts vary
as to whether this was a gift from Solomon,
or whether someone in his entourage stole it.
But the Ark of the Covenant is there in Ethiopia,
and they believe the Ark is rightfully theirs.
Unlike, say, the story of the Philistines
taking the Ark for themselves,
nothing bad happens to these Ethiopians
for having the Ark of the Covenant there.
There’s no plagues, there’s no tumors,
there’s no walls collapsing,
and no instant death for the people who gaze upon it.
LAURENCE: Instead, Menelik’s kingdom thrives.
CARGILL: Menelik’s family line,
which claims to be the Solomonic Dynasty,
flourishes for 2,000 years.
And to this day, the church that they founded
claims to possess the Ark of the Covenant.
Every aspect of Ethiopian Orthodoxy
has the Ark at its core.
There are tens of thousands of Ethiopian Orthodox churches
in the world, and every one of them, to be consecrated,
must have a replica Ark of the Covenant
inside its Holy of Holies-- its inner sanctum chamber.
On special occasions, the Ark of the Covenant replica
can be brought out and paraded around.
But even it remains covered, because even these replicas
are thought to have tremendous power.
LAURENCE: But with so many replicas,
where is the real Ark?
In Axum, a town 20 miles from the Eritrean border,
is the Cathedral of Our Lady Mary of Zion.
The cathedral is part of a complex of buildings
that represent the holiest place on Earth
for Ethiopian Orthodox Christians.
It’s the equivalent of the Roman Catholic Vatican.
The new cathedral building was constructed in the 1950s
by the Emperor Haile Selassie.
It’s adjacent to the old church built in the 1500s
on a site that had been in use
since the 4th century.
So, in between two buildings, there’s another smaller one,
and the small one is the one that’s really important,
and it’s known as the Chapel of the Tablet.
And here is where the Ethiopians believe
that the Ark of the Covenant is kept.
CARGILL: The Chapel of the Tablet was built in 1965
because, according to legend, of a divine heat
that was emanating from the Ark
that was so hot, it actually cracked the stones
of the old church that sat next door.
So, the Chapel of the Tablet is a more fortified home
for the safekeeping for the Ark of the Covenant.
NICOLA: It’s one of the most heavily secured chapels
that you would ever come across.
There is only one person who can actually enter
into that building, and he’s known
as the Guardian Monk.
The Guardian Monk serves for life.
He needs to be a virgin, he takes an oath of celibacy.
And he spends his entire life
in service to the Ark of the Covenant,
making prayers and offering up incense before it.
CARGILL: He’s not allowed to stray
more than 10 feet from the building
in which the Ark sits.
He’s essentially bound to it,
a life in service to this holy relic.
LAURENCE: Before a Guardian Monk dies,
he appoints his own successor.
It’s a cycle that has continued unbroken for generations.
Of course, some are suspicious that all of the secrecy
that surrounds the site
means precisely that the Ark isn’t there.
It could be that this Ark is simply another replica.
But on the rare occasions when these Guardian Monks
are interviewed, they state with absolute certainty
that this is the Ark of the Covenant.
They believe it, as do tens of millions of followers
of Ethiopian Orthodoxy worldwide.
NICOLA: I think it’s safe to say that there is something
very precious in this chapel.
Whether that is actually the Ark of the Covenant
is ultimately impossible to say.
LAURENCE: But there may be an opportunity to find out soon.
HUGO: A new Chapel of the Tablet is currently being built
behind the present one.
It’s slightly larger, it has thicker walls.
It will also have an ornate silver dome on the top.
As soon as this new chapel is completed,
whatever object is inside the current chapel
will have to be brought out.
Undoubtedly, they’ll do it as quickly as possible
under as much secrecy as possible.
NICOLA: If it’s the Ark of the Covenant,
maybe we’ll finally get a glimpse of it,
and with it, some answers.
For centuries, researchers try and fail
to track the Ark of the Covenant.
But in the 1880s, a British group
takes a different approach, leading to a shocking new theory
that places the Ark somewhere no one expected.
HUGO: Starting around 1872,
some people who call themselves
the British Israelites
begin organizing,
first in England, then in other parts
of the British Empire, and eventually
also in the United States.
NICOLA: They believe that they were descended
from the ancient Israelites,
the same people who built the Ark,
lived in Jerusalem, and were exiled
after the Babylonian destruction.
LAURENCE: Led by three British nationalists,
the group begins researching a possible connection
between the ancient Israelites and the British Anglo-Saxons.
I think it’s a self-serving effort.
"If we can prove our ethnic or social group
"is descended from God’s chosen people,
then that makes us that much more superior."
But sure enough, they believe they found a connection.
The oldest records and texts about the Israelites
settling in the Promised Land
said that they were divided into 12 different tribes.
The number 12 may or may not be historically accurate,
but we do know that by the time that the Romans
had occupied that territory,
after the Jewish War, around the year 70,
the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus
says at that point, only two tribes still remained.
The other 10 are in dispersion.
LAURENCE: According to the British Israelites,
these 10 lost tribes of Israel
migrated to Europe.
ED: According to this theory, they called themselves
Isaac’s Sons, and from "Isaac’s Sons,"
we derive the word "Saxons."
CARGILL: We know that Saxons definitely settled
in the British Isles in around the mid-5th century.
Saxon presence there is not disputed.
In fact, we owe a large chunk of the English language
to the Saxons.
ED: But did they come all the way from Jerusalem,
and did they bring with them the Ark of the Covenant?
If that’s true, well, where is it?
NICOLA: Because they believe that the lost tribes
ended up in Britain, the British Israelites
start combing through history books
and mythological materials looking for clues.
And they find a book of ancient Irish history, mythology.
It’s called the "Lebor Gabala Erenn."
To them, this book is the missing link
that connects them to the Ark.
LAURENCE: The "Lebor Gabala Erenn"
describes a Far East princess named Tea Tephi
who comes to Ireland and marries King Erimon.
ED: Traveling with Princess Tea Tephi
are an old white-haired man
and his servant whose name is Brach.
The British Israelites believe that this old man
was Jeremiah accompanied by his servant Baruch,
his scribe who wrote down his story.
In the Book of Second Maccabees,
it says that the Prophet Jeremiah
escaped the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem,
and took with him the Ark of the Covenant
and a couple of other temple vessels.
The British Israelites believe
that Prophet Jeremiah brought the Ark of the Covenant
with Tea Tephi to Ireland.
LAURENCE: The British Israelites
search the Bible for clues to Tea Tephi’s identity.
When they destroy Jerusalem, the Babylonians
capture King Zedekiah and murder his sons.
But according to the Book of Jeremiah,
his daughter is spared.
NICOLA: This daughter, who’s named Tamar,
the British Israelites believe is actually Tea.
So, as the theory goes,
this entourage of people is the same group
who arrive with all the stuff together in Ireland,
but they have brought the Ark of the Covenant.
Tamar/Tea marries, becomes a queen of Ireland,
and when she dies, she’s buried along with the Ark
in an ancient sacred center that was her kingdom,
now known as the Hill of Tara.
LAURENCE: The Hill of Tara is one of Ireland’s
most precious national monuments.
HUGO: It’s a place that rivals Stonehenge
as one of many important Neolithic sites
in the British Empire.
It’s the legendary seat of the ancient Irish monarchs,
a place that humans have associated with great power
for thousands of years.
LAURENCE: Archaeologists at Tara
have found large earthen structures,
ceremonial stone monuments,
and hundreds of ancient burials.
HUGO: Tea, Tamar, Tara-- some people think that the site
is named for the queen who brought the Ark there.
Once the British Israelites develop their theory,
they want to excavate the site,
convinced that they’re going to find the Ark there.
In 1899, British Israelite archaeologist Walton Adams
and Charles Groom come to the site of Tara.
The group convinces the owner of the land,
Gustavus Briscoe, to let them begin digging for the Ark.
CARGILL: So, they get to work,
and they’re excavating for months and months,
and nobody’s really paying attention to them.
But eventually some Irish nationalists
catch wind of what’s going on, and they are furious.
HUGO: The British Israelites only care about one thing--
the Ark-- and they’re not very careful
about how they do their business.
So, they’re causing untold destruction
to a major cultural icon.
LAURENCE: Nearby landowner, Sir John Dillon,
keeps a detailed account of the excavation.
Sir John Dillon sees them taking out bones,
Roman coins, and they’re just discarding it like it’s rubbish.
And he’s mortified by what they’re doing.
NICOLA: If this is allowed to continue,
they are going to succeed in laying waste
to probably Ireland’s most significant sacred site.
LAURENCE: By January of 1901,
a full-scale media campaign is launched
to try and halt the digging.
CARGILL: National heroes like the writers
George Moore and W.B. Yeats join in the chorus to save Tara,
and eventually they succeed.
These British Israelites abandon their quest for the Ark,
and the site is now owned by the Irish government,
which is never going to let them search for the Ark again.
NICOLA: It’s an incredible story.
They’re combining the Bible with Irish mythology
to place the Ark of the Covenant,
one of the most powerful objects in the world,
in one of the most powerful places in the world.
But without any kind of proof, it’s just that-- a story.
LAURENCE: Over the years, theories have placed
the powerful Ark of the Covenant
everywhere from Ethiopia to Ireland.
But historians remain skeptical
that it could have traveled so far from Jerusalem.
NICOLA: If the Ark existed
and survives, it’s probably
somewhere in the Middle East.
With the Babylonians closing in
around the destruction of the temple,
the Jews would not have had very much time.
And so, the best thing to do
would just to have been to hide it.
CARGILL: It’s not like they can take it
on a long voyage.
They would have probably had
to carry it on foot.
It probably didn’t travel very far.
So, you’re definitely left with a limited radius
in which to look.
NICOLA: Could they even have gotten the Ark out of Jerusalem?
Some theorists note that before the Babylonians
actually laid siege to the city,
they actually surrounded it for a couple of years,
and it would have been impossible
to have smuggled anything in or out.
LAURENCE: But in 2007, a new discovery
challenges that thinking.
CARGILL: A team of archaeologists,
Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron,
discovered what they call an escape hatch,
a tunnel running from the Temple Mount
all the way down outside of the city.
NICOLA: The tunnel has walls that are up to 10 feet tall.
That’s plenty of space for a group of priests
to have smuggled out considerable numbers of objects,
including the Ark of the Covenant.
CARGILL: This tunnel leads under the city walls
to the Kidron Valley.
So now, we have a possible escape route
for the Ark of the Covenant.
ED: The discovery of this tunnel
connects a lot of the biblical dots
of the story of the Ark.
The Book of Second Maccabees suggests that Jeremiah,
the prophet, takes the Ark of the Covenant
and the temple treasures out of the city.
HUGO: So, here’s the big question.
If this tunnel
is the Ark’s escape path
leading to the Kidron River,
where does it go from there?
LAURENCE: According to Ark hunter Jim Barfield,
there’s only one possible answer.
JIM: The Kidron River heads east,
and then it branches off into the Qumran River,
which leads past an ancient settlement
also called Qumran.
Qumran is famous because that’s where
the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.
I’ve been studying Qumran for 25 years,
and I believe that it’s the resting place
of the Ark of the Covenant as well.
LAURENCE: The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls here in 1947
stunned both the scientific and religious communities.
HUGO: This is one of the biggest archaeological finds in history.
981 manuscripts, some over 2,500 years old,
found buried and sealed inside 11 caves.
It’s hard to overstate their importance.
Here, we find the oldest surviving manuscripts
of many parts of the Hebrew Bible.
There’s a bunch of other writings
in there as well that give us
all kinds of important historical information.
So, as an archaeological find, the Dead Sea Scrolls are huge.
HUGO: Most of the scrolls are papyrus or parchment,
and most of them contain stories and scriptures.
But one of them, discovered in 1952,
is made of copper.
It dates back to the first century.
JIM: The Copper Scroll is not a bible story.
On that copper, they have hammered instructions
to find treasures from the Temple of Solomon,
which I believe includes the Ark of the Covenant.
HUGO: The Copper Scroll lists 64 places
where various items are hidden,
including hordes of gold and silver.
But the text is vague and difficult to decipher,
possibly to prevent outsiders
from discovering the location of these sites.
The text gives a number of directions to landmarks
that only locals would likely have known.
Like, "It’s in the salt pit under the steps,"
or, "in the cave of the old washer’s chamber
on the third terrace."
LAURENCE: Barfield was a fire investigator
for 23 years.
After dedicating his life to solving mysteries,
he turns his attention to this one.
JIM: And I made it my mission to decode the Copper Scroll
and find the Ark of the Covenant.
And now, I believe I’m on the verge of a breakthrough.
NICOLA: So, there’s a compelling trail of evidence
that leads Barfield to Qumran in search of the Ark.
There’s a tunnel leading out of Jerusalem
straight to a waterway.
They’ve done excavations all along this path,
and they’ve found coins, pottery,
evidence that ancient Jews were in that area.
HUGO: The waterway leads to Qumran,
which is known as a place of safekeeping--
full of caves, in which were found
hundreds of priceless artifacts, including the Copper Scroll,
a treasure map written in Hebrew, found in Qumran.
It doesn’t explicitly say in the Copper Scroll
that the location for all these hidden treasures is Qumran.
But it makes sense that you might wanna look there.
In 2007 I was ready to visit Qumran.
I had my own replica of the Copper Scroll.
I had satellite maps and all the information
that I could gather from the biblical text.
But when I got there, I had no idea
what I might encounter.
Was I wrong about all this? Was it a wild goose chase?
There’s only one way to find out.
LAURENCE: In 2007, investigator Jim Barfield’s search
for the famed Ark of the Covenant
brings him to the ancient Jewish settlement
of Qumran, Israel.
JIM: Qumran was destroyed
by the Romans, very similar
to what happened in Jerusalem.
But unlike Jerusalem, the Romans didn’t take
all the treasures.
Nearly 2,000 years later, the Dead Sea Scrolls remained,
waiting to be discovered.
And I believe still hiding at Qumran
are the temple treasures of King Solomon
and the Ark of the Covenant.
LAURENCE: Barfield narrows his search
based on instructions in the Copper Scroll.
HUGO: Location one on the Copper Scroll
describes 17 talents
of silver service vessels.
That’s around 1,200 pounds,
or $340,000 of pure silver.
But of course, it’s priceless as an archaeological find.
JIM: This Copper Scroll said it’s at the steps heading east,
40 cubits long. That’s about 65 feet.
LAURENCE: In Qumran, Barfield is only able to find
one location with steps heading east.
JIM: When I get there, I measured the steps,
and they are exactly 40 cubits long.
And I am absolutely convinced that those service vessels
are buried at that location.
NICOLA: Remember, this is Barfield’s
first visit out there.
He’s not part of any dig.
He’s just really trying to line things up.
LAURENCE: Next, Barfield turns his attention
to finding location number two.
JIM: A second location on the Copper Scroll
says "in the dry cistern,
"at the great ruined courtyard of the peristyle,
"in the soft sea floor is hidden polished gold.
In front of the uppermost opening are 900 talents."
That’s an incredible 33 tons of polished gold.
HUGO: So now, Barfield is looking for a cistern
and a courtyard, but he’s still not sure
that the Copper Scroll is referring to places
in and around Qumran.
He believes, though, that the sites
keep lining up for him.
JIM: And when I found the location
of the cistern, it was easy to determine
because there was a great courtyard there
that matched the description of the Copper Scroll.
NICOLA: Barfield is excited, and he believes that he’s found
33 tons of polished gold in this location.
LAURENCE: Unfortunately, Barfield lacks permission
to dig, so he can’t verify the gold is here.
But he’s looking for a much more valuable prize.
JIM: Locations one and two are lining up.
But my ultimate goal is to find location number three,
which could hold the temple treasures
of King Solomon and the Ark of the Covenant.
NICOLA: The Copper Scroll describes this location
as being at the north end of the Hill of Kohlit.
Whatever the ancient Jews used to refer to
as the Hill of Kohlit,
it’s been lost to the sands of time.
JIM: I realized that the hill couldn’t be within Qumran
because there’s no hills within the ruins of Qumran.
But there are several nearby.
LAURENCE: Barfield studies satellite imagery
to identify a potential candidate
for the Hill of Kohlit.
Not only does Barfield find a hill that seems to match,
when he gets there, there appears to be a cave
that’s sealed shut.
To him, it doesn’t look like a natural rock formation.
LAURENCE: He believes the cave’s location
may also be a clue.
When I looked at this location on my map,
locations three, two, and one
were in a perfectly straight line.
It was as if whoever wrote this document
was leading me to this specific location.
LAURENCE: Barfield is eager to prove
this cave is hiding something.
JIM: I decided that I would take a sample of this stone
and send it off to a lab in Skokie, Illinois,
where we had it examined.
And they find that it is manmade mortar
in a common mixture and formula from that timeframe.
Why would somebody seal a random hill with concrete?
HUGO: So, James Barfield takes all of this evidence
and requests the permission of Israeli authorities
to conduct a dig.
They don’t go that far, but they do allow him
to return in 2014 with a parliamentary delegate
named Moshe Feiglin.
This time, he’s able to bring in more advanced equipment.
What we decided to do was buy an industrial metal detector.
Before I went back, we took that metal detector,
and I buried 30 pounds of silver in my front yard
to get a baseline, to make sure
that what we were seeing, we could judge it
against whatever we might find at Qumran.
Back in Qumran, we scanned the courtyard of the peristyle,
and as we got close, we just clipped the edge
where the 33 tons of gold were buried,
and the readings just went off the charts.
And when we get to location number three,
the metal detector confirms my suspicions
that this is the mother lode.
HUGO: According to Barfield’s results,
the metal detector finds five times the amount of metal
in location number three than the 33 tons of gold
posited for location number two.
I’ve already proven that something is down there.
Now, we’ve gotta dig it up and see what it is.
The Copper Scroll, the biblical text, the map,
the mortar, the metal detector readings--
all of these leave me with no doubt,
in this sealed cave
are the greatest treasures of Israel.
When they finally give us permission to do the excavation,
we’re gonna be face to face with the Ark of the Covenant.
Jim Barfield is currently lobbying the Israeli Congress
for permission to excavate at Qumran.
If he’s successful, there’s a chance
that the search for the Ark of the Covenant
may one day be over.
I’m Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching "History’s Greatest Mysteries."